Principles of western civilisation

432 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

mentioned are but the outside fringe, to continue. The attempt is constantly being made in England to grapple with them by legislation. But the deeply significant fact is that the cry goes up continually that the remedies attempted are inoperative. What we seem to have in view is a stage of the economic process in which the conceptions of the first phase of the competitive era are no longer applicable. For here, just as in the United States with the measures passed to control trusts, the problem with which failure is associated, the problem with which the law is always confronted in the last resort, is, how to take any effective measures against the evil which it is desired to suppress, and yet not strike, at the same time, at what have been universally accepted as fundamental principles of business, of speculation, and of enterprise, in the phase of the competitive process through which we have lived.

It is impossible to avoid receiving a deep impression of the significance of these results and tendencies in our time. They are undoubtedly all phases of the same development. It would seem that we have reached a period in which it is becoming evident that the governing principle of the social process in our civilisation altogether transcends the meaning associated with the conception of free competition in the phase of the competitive era through which we have passed. Even in relation to matters so fundamental as the principles regulating supply and demand throughout the world, it has become the duty of the economist, so thoughtful a representative of the historical school as Professor Ashley informs us, to consider that we are probably on the verge of a state of society in which prices